


No Place Like Home

by FrostKitten8



Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: Introspection, Other, definitely not projecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 14:37:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19111705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostKitten8/pseuds/FrostKitten8
Summary: A headcanony look into the mindset of a wanderer. Alternative title: Snufkin Has Unresolved Issues and So Do I So Now They're the Same Issues





	No Place Like Home

Moomintroll was a sweet boy, but he had a knack for finding difficult questions. It was very hard to tell if he could somehow sense when he wasn't getting an honest answer, or if he just hoped the answer would change. Either way, he was making it very difficult for Snufkin to keep coming up with excuses. Both for his friend and for himself. So, why _couldn't_ he stand to stay, just for one winter?

He really didn't want to think too hard on it. It made him think of things he wanted to leave behind him. His past was what it was, and he wouldn't trade the outcome for the world - being left in that box, being found only to get sick of it and leave - it all made him who he was. It all brought him to Moominvalley. To the closest thing he'd ever really known to a "home."

Maybe that was the problem. Snufkin started wandering at a very young age. Since he was a child, he'd never had a home or a family or anything to keep him in one place for long. Sometimes keeping on the move was necessary to stay alive. Sometimes it was just easier. And that changes a person. After a while, it didn't matter if the people were nice, if the town was pretty, if the land around was open and free and people were generous with their coffee - nothing could keep him around for more than a week or so. Until he came to the valley. No one had forced him to come along or to stay. There he found a landscape varied and beautiful, a mamma who was ready to treat him as a son, and the best friend he could ever hope for, and not a single one of them expected him to stay longer than he wanted to. They would be sad to see him go, sure, but they wouldn't stop him. And yet, he found himself staying longer and longer anyways. He found himself in one little valley, across the river from a tall blue house for three seasons out of four every year. He found himself setting up camp before the last of the snow had even melted away in spring, and not leaving until the whole town was quiet and his boots left prints in the first snows chasing away fall. He was practically there all year at this point as it was.

So why did just a couple more months in one place during the roughest time of year to travel bother him so much?

If he thought about it long enough, he might just realize a single simple truth that drove him: he didn't know how to be home. He wasn't quite sure what "home" meant. He jumped from city to city, from mountain to valley, from forest to coast all his life. For years, every morning when he woke up, the sunrise found him in a different place than the day before. Every place he ever visited he was either a stranger or a visitor, and always a novelty, and whenever there was no one around to gawk at the dusty wanderer in green, there were simply the greeting calls of birds and the low rustle of a wind playing with the trees. And then he would land in Moominvalley, where he was simply Snufkin. An odd man who walked the world around and gathered stories, but was still no stranger than family. And that would feel wonderful for a while. The sunny summer days and crisp fall mornings would stroll by comfortably. Until the Moomin house geared up for a winter indoors. Until everyone got ready to sleep the cold season away. Until the idea started creeping in, helped by Moomin's wishes for him to stay, usually contained to sad sighs and stares, every once in a while breaking free when the troll could bear it no longer. Until the idea sunk in, just for a moment, of this place being more than a temporary place. Of this place being more permanent. Somewhere the sun could find him every morning. Somewhere he would never feel like a visitor, never be just stopping by, never have to leave. It was terrifying - it was confusing - it was untread territory, and not in the fun explorer way, but in a "this might change me and I don't know how, or what to do about it" way - like falling with no clue where you would land, if you would land at all!

But he wouldn't think about it that long. He would just walk.


End file.
